Author: Nicole Amy Roberts

I want find space that is empty.
Space that is not cluttered.
Space that is free from people.
“Space is both determines and is determined by the improvisation occurring within it, offering stimulation, limitation, location, orientation, motivation and more.”(De Spain, 2014, 108) My own habitual tendencies create limitations in space and thus determine my improvisation.
I know that I like large open spaces, I like to feel free, and I know in this type of space anything is possible.

I search and listen for space that is empty. I walk towards it… someone else arrives there first. Should I change or stick with my intention?
I know what habitual me would do, she would change her intention and would keep on doing so until she found that open space.
So I stick with my intention and now I am face to face with someone else.
The same happens again, my shoulder is touching someone else’s.
Through experimenting with space I have come to discover that restricted space is not as daunting as I imagined.
I will allow myself to experiment within restricted space, whether it is physical or mental.

“In improvisation, time can be friend or foe” (De Spain, 2014, 114)
Following Barbara Dilley’s improvisation practice, whilst dancing the improviser calls ‘out the beginning, middle, and end of the dance as they feel them arise as the piece unfolds’ (Buckwalter, 2010, 69-70).

In this case time is my foe.

• Beginning – I explore a small movement, a finger tapping against my leg. The size of the movement begins to gradually increase. When I have reached the point where I can increase the movement no more, the beginning is over.
• Middle – I feel the need to travel, initiating at first from the finger. I explore movement initiating from different parts of the body; the hip, the chest, the heel, the knee, the head, the elbow. I feel I have exhausted all possibilities, the middle is over.
• End – I begin to make my way to the floor, my effort level decreases dramatically. On my knees, I slide out my arm… END! My two minutes are up.

My foe did not allow me to find my ‘felt ending as signaled by the body or an organic ending that comes out of the material’ (Buckwalter, 2010, 60).
I will never know what would have happened in that moment. I can offer possibilities, but never know for certain. I cannot re-create everything that occurred within those two minutes.

Time is an interesting concept in improvisation. Two minutes can seem like two seconds. I have no sense of time when I’m improvising; I become absorbed in the moment and all its possibilities.

It all comes down to chance.

As a final task we were given a chance score, taken from the ideas of Nina Martin.The groupings and time in which the score would last were selected at random. There will be a solo, duet and a quartet. They must follow this order.

The score will last for 3 minutes.
All three sections will be performed within the time.
The people dancing within the groups does not have to stay the same.

This score allowed me to apply everything I have learnt in the past few weeks:
>I had to track not only my own movement but also others.
>I had to focus my attention on ‘the relationship and interaction of more than one “thing”.’ (De Spain, 2014, 168) Movement, time, space,                contact and relationships.
> I did not have an intention, I did not create limitations.
> I had to be consciously aware of time, in order to fit all three sections within the three minutes.
> The space was open, we could determine what occurred within it.

After thought… 

I have now been learning the art of improvisation for four weeks, combing the structures and modes of dance improvisation such as tracking, attention, intention, time and space into my improvisational practice has allowed me to gain deeper understanding of the practice and its concepts. I feel that I can apply all of these concept, that I have learnt so far, into improvisation.
I have engaged in improvisation from a number of starting points which range from throwing bean bags to paying attention to a particular body part. A starting point determines a lot within improvisation, it sets a tone and initiates an unconscious intention (whether that be a good or bad thing is questionable). I look forward to the coming weeks where starting points can be explored further.

 

Buckwalter, M. (2010) Composing While Dancing, An Improviser’s Companion. USA: University of Wisconsin Press.

De Spain, K. (2014) Landscape of the Now. New York: Oxford University Press.

Part 1

Continue. Develop. Change.  Develop, develop, develop. I always come back to develop.

Whilst moving through space I became aware that my movement was dominated by development, my movement would develop in various forms: spatial pathways, levels and dynamics. When being observed, my partner came to the same conclusions as I did. It seems that developing movement is habitual to me.

Establish. Change. Establish. Change. This is definitely not habitual to me.  

Establish movement content.
Change, when your partner shouts the word.
Establish a new movement.

Through this process I became very reactive to the change, I became aware of an eagerness within me to find the next new thing. I had quickly exhausted my habitual movement, and what came after seemed unnatural, even weird and silly. I found myself creating movement I had never experienced before. The observer even noted that the movement became more interesting to watch.

Attention, establish. Change. Attention, establish. Change.  I don’t want to change.

Now with the same process, we had to incorporate attention;  ‘an intentional focus on a specific “thing”, or closely observing the relationship and interaction of more than one “thing”. (De Spain, 2014)

Naturally, the movement quality of this process became slow and sustained. To adhere to this process, I focused my attention in one part of the body, and worked my movement around the attention. I found in myself an unwillingness to change, I had become attached to my movement and the feeling of it. My sole attention was focused in that one place. I became attached to how the movement felt. From this I developed an intention. I intended to find movement that felt the same or had a connection to the previous. I left myself ‘not open to the magic of the unexpected’ (De Spain, 2014, 69) I created a limitation that left little room for the new.

 

Part 2. The score. The Jam.

Section 1 –

I thought that only being able to use the six movement list above, that this section would be repetitive. It was interesting to see how different formations were conceived within the space and with what movement. This is what struck me most. It seems that there are infinite number of possibilities.

Section 2 –  

It is interesting how section 1 and 2 appeared and felt completely different, and the only thing that changed was the spatial orientation.

Section 3 – 

It became difficult to break away from the  six limitations of movement, we could now perform anything but I felt comfortable with the previous. It took sometime before I could comfortably initiate movement, as opposed to continuing or developing.

Section 4 – 

I found my feet in this section. Maybe because it was similar to section 3, a side from the increase of space we could perform in. I could apply the ideas of tracking, attention and intention to movement.
I track the essence of movement.
I pay attention to a particular body part of a movement.
I intend to continue, develop or change.

De Spain, K. (2014) Landscape of the Now. New York: Oxford University Press.

Part 1

Tracking – engaging further with improvisational practice, drawing on in the moment experiences and documenting then in various forms. (De Spain, 2014)

I am improvising in space, and the pace is increasing at an alarming rate. When it peaks, I feel as if I have lost all sense of control of my body and I am finding shapes and positions that I have never found before. But I can’t recall a single one of them. I was suppose to track my movement but there are so many components to keep track of: The movement I am performing, with what body part I am performing it with, the dynamics of the movement, the space the movement is performed in, the space around me, the people in the space around me, and the time of the movement.

It seems that this list will never end…

It is easy to be completely consumed by the now. There is so much going on’ (De Spain, 2014 , 45), I certainly agree with you there.

Think, Imagine, Do.

• Think of a movement
• Imagine yourself doing the movement
• Do the movement

The nature of this task allowed me to consider all possibilities of movement from one single position. Selecting movement using this process allowed me to easily track and document my movement later on. This is because my movement selection was more thought out, there was no urgency for me to choose movement, there was no time restriction, I moved at my own accord, my own pace. This process was interesting for me, I found that it moved me away from my habitual movement; it gave me the time to weigh up all possibilities of movement from any one position.

Swing. Fall. Jump. Curl. Stretch. Upside down. Explore. Push. Invert.

Shouting out these words whilst improvising became an effective way for me to track my movement. I found it much easier to track my movement as it enabled me to connect movement with words, acting as an aide memoir.

The second part of this task meant that our partner would shout out the words we had done so previously, in a randomly selected order, whilst we were improvising. We would then use these words to influence our movement. I found it easy to recall movement from my previous improvisation; meaning that I steered away from what I had already done.

Part 2. The Score. The Jam.

Walk in slow motion around the space for 2 minutes. DING.

Move into one of the thirds. Perform movement. Track your movement. DING

Walk in slow motion around the space for 2 minutes. DING

Track the movement you performed in the first section and translate this into a different body part. DING.

Walk in slow motion around the space for 2 minutes. DING

Document your thoughts.

End.

To develop my skills from the previous lesson, I decided to focus on the ideas of Barbra Dilley, where by she uses the art of meditation to influence her improvisational and tracking methods – “I work with three little disciplines – slowness, stillness and repetition – as a way of slowing  down the nervous system to allowing tracking…” (Dilley, 2014, cited in De Spain, 2014, 49)
Using this technique worked particularly well for this score as the entire score was performed in silence. The silence allowed me to fully engage in myself  and find in my movement the slowness, stillness and at some points repetition needed to track.

After thought…

It seems in my improvisational practices this week, that the timings and pacing have been rather methodical and very much the same. I now understand the process of tracking and have gained the necessary skills to be able to do it, but I need to apply it further.
Not every improvisation session is going to be the same and I don’t know how I will cope with tracking at a different pace. What happens if I get lost in the movement, like I did earlier on in the week? I need to explore timing and pace further.

 

De Spain, K. (2014) Landscape of the Now. New York: Oxford University Press.

Looking back on my initial ideas of improvisation, it would seem that I have been completely naive and somewhat ignorant to what the practice really is and what it captures. I believed improvisation to just be ‘dance without plan – without a predetermined direction – without any known end.’ (Midgelow, 2012, 10). Yes that is what improvising is, but there is so much more to it.

How can I engage in a practice with my prejudices? Where do I go from here?
I’ll let go of my preconceptions and start from scratch.
My companion, ‘LANDSCAPE OF THE NOW A Topography of Movement Improvisation’. (De Spain, 2014) will help me along the way.

I’m throwing a beanbag through space… to my partner. I am aware of the people around me doing the same.
I hear a bean bag drop. I drop to the floor.
I throw the bean bag. I freeze in a position.
I throw the bean bag. I make a noise.

Am I improvising?

Yes. I cannot second guess when someone will drop the beanbag, or where I will land in space from catching a beanbag, nor can I prepare a noise. I am improvising.

Throwing bean bags became our score.

We created a finite score. The end point is identifiable through the gradual reduction of people throughout the score.The emptiness of space signalises the end.

The choice that surrounds me leads me to space.
The space around me.
The space I am moving in.
The space between me and my partner.
The space other people are moving in.
With space I have a constant choice.
Where can I move in space? Where do I move in space to avoid collisions? Is there free space that I can utilise? Can my partner foreshadow where I am moving in space? Can my partner maintain a connection whilst I move around in space; are there any obstacles that can prevent the connection?

The fixed is when to move on to the next development. Twenty is the fixed number of throws. Each development consists of twenty throws; each pair will throw twenty times.  After twenty throws, a new development begins. The cycle is repeated, until the last development is reached.

Dropping of the beanbag becomes the unfixed. We cannot second guess when it will be dropped, there is no set timing. Only the word ‘drop’ announces that we must fall to the floor. We must adapt our movement accordingly. If I am midway through running, I will not suddenly stop and drop, I will incorporate the running into the fall. If I am in a freeze position, can I maintain parts of the freeze while dropping? These are decisions that are taken in the moment, there is no fixed way of when, where and how.

Our score attends to showing each development in a systematic way. The score functions as a canon:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5
__ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
______1, 2, 3, 4, 5
_________1, 2, 3, 4, 5
___________1, 2, 3, 4, 5

The audibility of counting to twenty, five times sets a pace for the performers and audience. It becomes a signal for the development change, and for a new pair to be introduced. The loss of this half way through the score results in confusion. The speed in which the beanbag is being thrown within each pair fluctuates, making the development changes harder to identify both as a performer and viewer. Keeping the counting as a constant throughout would aid with the clarity of intention.

Improvisation is an interesting practice. A practice where ‘dare is its lure’ (Buckwalter, 2010, 3).
Improvisation dares me to try the new, dares me to discover more.

Buckwalter, M. (2010) composing while dancing AN IMPROVISER’S COMPANION. USA: University Wisconsin Press.

De Spain, K. (2014) Landscape of the Now. New York: Oxford University Press.

Midgelow, V. L. (2012) Dear Practice… The experience of improvising. Choreographic Practices, 2 (1) 9-24.

 

Banes, S. (2003) Spontaneous Combustion: Notes on Dance Improvisation from the Sixties to the Nineties. In: Ann Cooper Albright and David Gere (eds.) Taken By Surprise: A Dance Improvisation Reader. Middletown, CT, USA: Wesleyan University Press, 77-85.

Buckwalter, M. (2010) composing while dancing AN IMPROVISER’S COMPANION. USA: University Wisconsin Press.

De Spain, K. (2014) Landscape of the Now. New York: Oxford University Press.

Husemann, P. (2005) The Functioning of Thomas Lehmen’s Funktionen. Dance Theatre Journal, 21 (1) 31-35.

Lavender, L. and Predock-Linnell, J. (2001) From Improvisation to Choreography: the critical bridge. Research inn Dance Education, 2 (2) 195-210.

Midgelow, V. L. (2012) Dear Practice… The experience of improvising. Choreographic Practices, 2 (1) 9-24.

Morgenroth, J. (1987) DANCE improvisations. Pittsburgh:. University of Pittsburgh Press.

Ribeiro, M. M. and Fonseca, A. (2011) The empathy and the structuring sharing modes of movement sequences in the improvisation of contemporary dance. Research in Dance Education, 12 (2) 71-85.

Worth, L. and Poynor, H. (2004) Anna Halprin. London: Routledge.